The Purpose of This Shared Research Is to Better Understand The

1

Hyperlink h

1

Introduction

The Office of the eSafety Commissioner (Australia), Netsafe (New Zealand) and UK Safer Internet Centre with the University of Plymouth (UK) have collaborated on research culminating in this report on young people’s experience of sending and sharing nude and nearly nude images, otherwise known as sexting.

For the purposes of this report, sexting is defined as any act or practice related to sending, receiving, requesting or being asked for mostly, but not always, self-generated nude or nearly nude images or video through digital tools and/or platforms. Such behaviour may arise for a range of reasons and contexts (e.g., consensual or non-consensual creation or sharing, flirting or relationship building, sexual self-exploration, coercion or extortion of content, intimidation and other abuse).

This work builds on jointly presented research by these agencies at the inaugural Online Safety on the Edge conference in Sydney on 3 November 2017 which was co-hosted by the Office of the eSafety Commissioner and Netsafe New Zealand.

The purpose of this shared research is to better understand the:

• prevalence of sending and sharing of both solicited and unsolicited nude or nearly nude images or videos, and
• young people’s influences and motivations for this behavior.

While each study is unique to its country context, the partners worked closely in the planning and delivery to enable a comparison of young people’s experiences across those jurisdictions. In the case of New Zealand and Australia, this included the development of common methodologies underpinning their respective nationally representative surveys. In addition, the Uniting Kingdom’s more qualitative and school based study provided invaluable interpretative insights that were carried into the analysis and presentation of research findings of the other research partners.

This report represents the foundation for future cross jurisdictional research co-operation onissues of common interest to all three agencies. It also builds on previously available research on sexting and provides up to date and timely evidence that will be useful in informing and developing programs and resources targeting young people’s online safety and security.

All three organisations would welcome the opportunity to discuss their individual or collective findings. Contact information has been provided in the report.

UNITED KINGDOM

Organisation overview

The research for the UK was carried out in partnership between the South West Grid for Learning Trust, one of the country’s leading online safety charities, and the University of Plymouth, an academic institution with a strong track record in children’s use of digital technology and children’s rights, led by Professor Andy Phippen.

The research for the 2017 project built on research conducted between 2009 and 2017 by the two organisations. There were two major elements to this, exploratory survey work in 2009/10 followed by in depth qualitative work in 2012. The 2017 research described in this report builds upon the findings of both of these pieces of work and therefore it is worthwhile to briefly reflect upon the key findings of previous work to place this research in context. The aim of the survey work in 2009 was to determine the prevalence of ‘sexting’ among Key Stage 4 (14-16) young people (Phippen 2016). The research was focused on the culture of youth involved imagery–we were exploring how young people were exposed to this material, whether they are affected by it, and what their thoughts were about those who generated the material, and those who share/spread it.

In 2009, the 14-16 year olds we surveyed were asked whether they knew people who self-generated and shared indecent images, and around 40% of our respondents said they did. When asked about prevalence 7% said incidents happened ‘regularly’ and 13% said ‘it happens all of the time’. The most popular response for this was they were aware of ‘one or two’ incidents of sexting in the last year (almost 40%). Approximately 56% of respondents said they were aware of instances where images were shared further than the intended recipient. However, interestingly when asked whether they thought that the aim of further spreading was to cause upset, only 22% said they felt this was the case. Which does raise the question of: what do they think the intentions of someone to non-consensually share an indecent image of a peer would be?

The 2012 work centred around focus groups with young people specifically exploring their attitudes toward these issues and how it impacts upon their lives. Around 100 young people were spoken to specifically as a result of this piece of research and allowed a detailed exploration of attitudes toward sexting (Phippen 2012).

The mundanity of sexting was clear from this research. This is something that happened, people get exposed to the images, whether they want to or not. There was also general agreement that a boy was far more likely to ‘volunteer’ an image to a girl (in general we talked about heterosexual relationships) and girls would self-generate as a result of a request, or pressure. Education was also discussed a great deal in these groups, with young people saying what little education they received around the topic in schools tended to focus on legality and prohibition, delivered in an ‘output only’ manner with no opportunity to ask questions.

Summary of research methodology

The UK research in 2017 adopted a mixed methods approach, incorporating a quantitative survey based element and a qualitative discursive element, the aim being to bring the most effective value from the different approaches—the survey work would allow some core statistics, and comparison with the Australian and New Zealand surveys, while the qualitative work would enable us to explore key themes from the research in depth with young people, providing a strong youth voice to the research.

At the time of writing, the survey has elicited 681 responses, with a fairly even gender split (53% male, 47% female) and the majority of respondents (66%) being aged 12-14. This younger demographic was deliberate–anecdotally we had observed a reduction in age in sexting practices in UK schools and we wanted to determine through quantitative measure whether this was the case. Data collection was carried out at a school level through contacts with establishments and to ensure we had a broad range of young people carrying out the survey. For the qualitative work 100 young people from year 10 (aged 14-15) were spoken to from five different schools. Focus groups were conducted with groups of 10, one male and one female group in each school aside from one all girls’ school we worked with, where we had two groups of 10 girls. So in total we interviewed 40 year 10 boys and 60 year 10 girls. The discussions were recorded and analysed, with key themes being drawn from the qualitative analysis.

Key findings

In the reporting of key findings, we look more in depth at the themes emerging both from the survey data and the qualitative work. These key themes include the similarity with previous research, the role of legislation to educate and prohibit, the role of pressure and other motivations in self generation, the responsibility for images, and where these views come from.

More of the same?

In commencing this reporting, we should stress the use of terminology and the generation divide this causes. While we had considered this to be a piece of research exploring ‘sexting‘, this was a term young people were generally uncomfortable with and, in a number of cases, they weren’t aware of. Sexting is a term used by academics, practitioners and policy makers for something that actually encompasses a range of behaviours and motivations and a single term fails to appreciate this nuance. For young people, the term sexting is replaced, generally, with ’nudes’ and ‘dick pics’. The differentiation is deliberate because they, apparently, reflect very different practices–the volunteered image from a boy (the dick pic) and the self-generated image produced as a result of request or pressure (the nude). Many young people we spoke to observed that adults seem to show little understanding of the issues they face and terminology is one of the ways this gap is demonstrated to young people.

Unsurprisingly, there was little change in statistics with the 49% 2017 population reporting knowledge of peers sharing self-generated images. Nineteen per cent said that they were aware of ‘a few’ incidents in the past year, and 12% said it ‘happens’ all the time. Knowledge of further spreading was admitted by 44% of the population, with 68% of respondents saying they don’t think this was done to cause upset. Therefore, even though the respondents were younger than those surveyed in previous research, we are seeing a number of similarities in terms of prevalence, the spreading of nudes and failing to appreciate that spreading nudes causes harm.

Interestingly, a lot of respondents from the focus groups (all aged between 14 and 15) stated that self generation was something that had ‘died down’ in their year however it had taken place when they were younger. They were also concerned that, for example, a year 8 child might self-generate, even though when they were that age it went on! This does highlight how quickly a judgemental viewpoint develops among people who have previously been exposed to these behaviours.

Motivation

One way we developed this survey work from previous questionnaires was to add questions about motivation, as this was one of the key themes we wanted to explore with focus groups. These questions were presented as ‘why do you think people send nudes’, rather than ‘why do you send nudes’, to enable a less confrontational questioning style while still allowing us to explore attitudes. When presented with a number of options the most popular responses were:

• because they wanted a relationship (67%)
• to be told they are attractive (68%)
• because they were pressured into doing it (66%).

We also provided respondents with the option to provide a free text answer to this question too, and this elicited some of the most interesting responses, mainly focussed around the fact that people in relationships do this sort of thing, something we will return to later in this document. However, perhaps more interesting were a couple of responses:

For pleasure (year 9 female)

Because it's their body and adults continually underestimate young people's understanding of consent and their free will. They want to. (year 11 girl)

These are a clear reminder that, whether we wish to acknowledge it or not, young people are simply ‘people’ and become sexually aware and wish to engage, for pleasure, with sexual practices. Pleasure is something that arose in discussion groups too–the view, which is difficult to argue with, that the exchange of images can be an enjoyable part of an intimate relationship. While, clearly, there are issues related to the legality of intimate relationships among our study population, we cannot fail to acknowledge that young people will experience them, even before the age of consent.

Pressure

Returning to the issue of pressure, which is important given recently policy changes and advice to schools around sexting (see below), we have conflicting views from the survey results but more clear views from the focus groups. When presented with the statement ‘There is a lot of pressure to send nudes’, 39% of respondents strongly agreed or agreed with it, whereas 33% strongly disagreed or disagreed with this (27% had ‘no opinion’). However, almost 70% also said that pressure was one of the key reasons why young people sent nudes.

The role of pressure was confirmed in our discussion groups, with many young people talking about persistent demands for images, or feeling peer pressure to engage in these practices. What was apparent was that many young people could not see anything wrong with being subjected to this sort of pressure which, if interpreted as some described in groups, might be viewed more seriously as coercion or harassment. Where an individual is sending many messages a day asking for a nude image or, in worse cases, using previously obtained images to demand more, often more explicit, pictures or videos, this is moving into behaviour that might require the intervention of law enforcement. However, when both coercer and victim do not see anything wrong with what is happening (because no one has ever told them anything to the contrary) it becomes very difficult for young people to check their behaviours or ask for intervention.

The role of peer pressure in general should also not be underestimated–this is, for many, part of forming relationships. They have seen other peers engage in these practices and are now in relationships. Therefore, in their interpretation, this is a successful technique to achieve a relationship, and this is something that is of paramount importance for a lot of young people. Being in a relationship means you are popular and attractive, two things that carry great currency in their lives. A particular quotation from one discussion illustrates the illogical approach some young people have to forming relationships and the use of self generation to do so:

Interviewer: Why do boys send dick pics?

Year 10 male: To get a nude back

Interviewer: Does that ever work?

Year 10 male: No, never

Interviewer: So why do it?

Year 10 male: Because one day it might

The boy went on to explain that the exchange of nudes is what happens at the start of a relationship, in his view the first step. While this might seem a very strange process for adults, why would he not think this if he only has his peers to learn from and some of those have relationships as a result of this approach?

Why are we standing still?

Perhaps one of the clearest things to emerge from the discussions was how little outlooks have changed over the past 5 years. Attitudes are still mundane, education is still sparse and tends to be in an ‘output only’ form, and knowledge is still developed by peers. Boys are still more likely to volunteer images, and girls are more likely to send as a result of requests and pressure, and the impact on the victim in the event that an image is spread depends on their gender, popularity and resilience. Girls are far more likely to receive abuse as a result of being the subject of a spread image, whereas most boys will laugh it off.

In talking to young people about their educational experiences around sexting, we might have evidence why this would be the case. Education tends to be, to use a term from some young people, ‘output only’. Schools are provided with resources, such as videos, PowerPoint presentations or lesson plans that are then delivered in assemblies, social education lessons or tutorials. The delivery will generally be didactic without the opportunity to ask questions or discuss. Generally speaking, focus group attendees felt that they learned little aside from the legalities of sexting and had few answers to more complex questions, such as why victims are blamed when images are shared. By failing to provide them with relevant, up to date and pragmatic education around issues such as self-generation, we are leaving young people to their own devices. Therefore, is it any wonder they engage in risky behaviours and think the way to engage in a relationship is to share images of their genitals or ask for indecent images of their peers?

To develop the issue of victim blaming, this is still one of the most concerning areas around self-generation, and one which seems to have changed very little even from our earliest research. Victim blaming follows a typical pattern of someone sending an image to one person, then the recipient shares that image, and the victim then receives abuse from the wider community because they are a ‘slut’ or a ‘slag’ for sending the image to this one trusted individual. There is very little focus on challenging the behaviour of the individual who spread the image further, just the person who took the image. In the survey data almost 75% of respondents said the person responsible for the image is the person who took it, even though in many instances that image might have been generated through peer pressure, harassment or coercion.

Legislation

Legislation, and its influence, is an important part of the new research. From survey results we could see that awareness of legality is apparent, with 64% strongly agreeing or agreeing with the statement ‘Sending a nude is illegal and people shouldn’t do it’ and 84% doing similar for the statement ‘Spreading a nude to other people is illegal and people shouldn’t do it’. This seems counter intuitive to the fact that every young person we had spoken to had been exposed to the fallout from nudes being spread around their schools–surely if they are all aware of the legislation, they would not do it and they would report others that did? Or is legislation not an effective deterrent?